Michele Palazzi

Michele Palazzi (b.1984, Italy) earned his masters degree in photography at the Scuola Romana di Fotografia. In 2009 he received the Enzo Baldoni Prize for his project 3:32am on the earthquake in Abruzzo. Between 2010 and 2011 he worked on the project Migrant Workers Journey which was a recipient of the Project Launch Award 2011 at Center Santa Fe and exhibited in the New Mexico Museum of Art. It was screened at the Visa Pour l’Image 2012. In 2013 he won the Environmental Photographer of the Year Award from CIWEM in the UK. Michele’s project Black Gold Hotel was exhibited at the Format Festival (UK) in 2013. His work has been published in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The British Journal of Photography and National Geographic (Italy). He lives in Rome.

About the Photograph:

“This photograph was taken while I was living with a nomad family in the Gobi desert, Tuvshinbayar, the father, is playing with his children during a sandstorm. It’s part of the project Black Gold Hotel, a journey in the daily lives of a few families from the Gobi desert, where the pasture which has been the main livelihood for centuries has been disappearing in the past few decades. On one hand, those who chose to continue the tradition of the steppe despite all difficulties, on the other those who preferred to take their chances in the large cities, unfortunately facing the reality of a space which is deteriorated and invaded by unreachable western cultural models.”